JANUARY 4, 1999

Hunting for a Lotus

DAVID HUNT, the owner of what remains of Team Lotus, is offering $8,000 for information following the theft of one of the operation's few remaining assets - a Lotus 102B - from a garage near Norwich, in Norfolk. The car had little value until Mika Hakkinen's World Championship victory but as this was the model in which he first made his mark in F1 the value shot up to around $160,000. The three other 102B models had already been sold to collectors and police are working on the theory that the robbery was the work of a professional gang acting on behalf of a private collector, who was desperate to get his hands on the car. If this is the case there is little chance of the car being found - until it comes onto the market again.